Number 3 Moorhouse Street, the home of the Birnies

The house at number 3 Moorhouse Street, Willagee, on the outskirts of Perth, Western Australia, was an unkempt white brick, two-bedroom bungalow. Its garden was overrun with weeds and dead flowers and it was in bad need of a coat of paint.

chapter continues

advertisement

Map of Australia with Perth locator

It was by far the worst house in the street and the only good thing that could be said about it was that it made the other houses around it look like palaces.

Yet this unglamorous dwelling would become the most notorious house in Australia. In the ensuing years people would slow down and point and whisper as they drove past it. It would become as infamous to Australians as the chamber of horrors at 213 Oxford Apartments, Milwaukee, became to Americans or London's 10 Rillington Place and 25 Cromwell Street became to the British.

It was at 213 Oxford Apartments between 1988 to 1991, that Jeffrey Dahmer, a 28-year-old chocolate factory worker, slaughtered 17 young men, raped and mutilated their corpses and ate their body parts.

It was at 10 Rillington Place in the early 50s that mild-mannered office clerk and necrophiliac serial killer John Christie murdered his victims, had sex with their corpses and buried their bodies in the backyard, under the floorboards and in the wall cavities.

It was at 25 Cromwell Street through the 70s and 80s that labourer Fred West and his wife Rose raped, tortured and murdered their victims and buried nine of their bodies in the backyard.

The house at number 3 Moorhouse Street was Australia's very own House of Horrors. It was the love-nest, torture chamber and killing field of Catherine and David Birnie, who, like the Wests, were a husband and wife serial killer team, the rarest form of serial killers in the world. It was here that they committed atrocities to their young female victims.

The Birnies weren't particularly fussy about who they murdered. As long as they were female. Their victim's ages ranged from 15 to 31. Whenever the Birnies felt like killing someone they would drive along the highways of Perth and pick up hitchhikers or other young women in need of a lift.

Their victims never suspected the friendly couple until it was too late. At knifepoint they were taken back to Moorhouse street and tied up and abused as the Birnies carried out their sexual fantasies. Then they were murdered. The lucky ones were put to sleep with an overdose of sleeping pills and then strangled. The less fortunate victims were either stabbed or bludgeoned to death with a knife or an axe as they sat in their shallow graves in a secluded pine forest a short drive out of Perth.

email print